This picture is by far one of my favorites from my time at Wheaton. It was taken a whole year ago at the Christmas party for our department. As of Friday, all of us will be graduated and headed out around the country, and eventually the world to the things God is leading us into.

I graduate on Friday....really.
It's hard to believe that a year and a half has passed by, that I earned 40 credits for a Masters Degree, that I made some great new friends, that I laughed and cried, slept a lot and drank lots of coffee. I wonder how many hours I wracked up between the library and caribou coffee studying.

One thing I've been most blessed by is time to just cultivate new friendships. I love the friendships I have working overseas. It's almost as though when you meet people in settings like that that you avoid all the meaningless chitchat because you both know a bit of the depths of that person's heart being that you are meeting them in a context that they are living out their passion. It makes for some intense interactions and you go deep with people you may never have gotten a chance to know if it wasn't for that place and calling that you both share.

Wheaton has been a time to meet a variety of people...people I hadn't expected to enjoy their friendship so much; people who think like me and yet differently as the same time. I've been able to socialize and be silly and do things with people just for the fun of it. That has been a wonderful gift!

And these women above have taught me much...how to live life with abandon, how live life making calculated and deliberate decisions, how to follow your passion, how to persevere, how to be a friend, how to share my heart, how to let the tears flow, how to laugh more, how to "study" with out really studying, how to be a better cook, how to call up friends just to talk, how to create community while not living in community. There are more than just these faces that I am taking away with me and many others not included in this picture but I felt like the photo was representative of some great, great times here at Wheaton.